In some sense…
… this blog is all about documents that are difficult to find. We search for articles about life deep underground, or rivers in Spain, or sex ratios of different animals.
But sometimes we need to find A SPECIFIC article or a SPECIFIC book. Usually it’s because someone has recommended it and we realize that we just have to find it.
My friend Pete recommended an article to me the other day. Unlike most suggestions like this, he actually knew exactly what the citation was. Here’s what he told me: “Go read this article, I think it was in Psychology Today, the title is “On Watching Myself Grow Old.”
Great. That’s not a lot to go on. But with a few SRS skills I was pretty quickly able to figure out that he meant this article…
Hebb, D. O. (November, 1978) “On watching myself get old” Psychology Today, 12(6):15-23
“Excellent,” I thought to myself, “finally! A decent citation!” I thought it would be a 5-second search to get the article.
But no!
It turns out to be harder than it looks. Much harder. I’ll be curious to see how you solve it.
1. Can you find the full text of this article?
Hebb, D. O. (November, 1978) “On watching myself get old” Psychology Today, 12(6):15-23
I’ll tell you, I finally found it, but it wasn’t easy. Can YOU find it more rapidly than I could?
In another conversation from this week, my friend Bill said “I loved that book by James Patterson that had a number in the title. You have to read it!”
“That’s it?” I protested. “That’s all you can tell me?”
“Oh yeah. The cover was yellow. Does that help?”
Kinda. I guess. So I put it to you:
2. Can you find the novel by James Patterson that has a yellow cover AND has a number in the title?
Good luck with these!
Be sure to tell us HOW you found the Psychology Today article and that yellow-number-in-the-title book by James Patterson. I’m sure we’d all love to learn how you did it!
Search on!
